News

It is good to see that the Addiscombe Carnival will take place again this year. Although the procession last year was beyond pathetic the events in Ashburton Park coinciding with the presence of a funfair did seem quite successful.

Looking back at the website for information on last year's event, the organisers seem to refer to 'walking floats', which seems to be participants on foot, and 'mobile floats', which seems to mean cars or vans with or without trailers (and in last year's case the trikes).  In other words proper carnival floats, which would mostly be based on lorries, don't seem to have ever been an option.

The chosen day is again a Sunday, rather than the Saturday chosen for every other carnival I've experienced.  This seems likely to again have a negative effect on the procession.

The Addiscombe Carnival will be held on Sunday 25 July 2010 with the 'fair' being as Ashburton Park from 11am to 5pm. It would seem to again be coinciding with the presence of a funfair in the park.

This year the route of the procession has been extended back along Morland Road to a starting point at Woodside Green.

The proposed 20mph speed limit on Davidson Road was originally due to be discussed at the July 2009 meeting of the Traffic Management Committee, making one wonder why the deadline for objections was the 1st April. It never appeared on the agenda for that meeting but was on the Agenda for the October 2009 meeting. There had been just three objections to the scheme but it the light of those the six local councillors covering the area were consulted and it turned out that three didn't support the proposal, two thought it was too severe, and only one supported it. The report to the committee recommended that the 20mph proposal be revoked and hopefully the committee members accepted that recommendation.

The report to the committee persists in the suggestion that Davidson Road is 1.165 km long which would still seem to be an error. Looking at a map it would seem to be about a mile long and the AA journey planner certainly agrees.

It has to said that the Addiscombe Carnival procession was a bit pathetic. Actually it was more than a bit pathetic, it was so bad it wasn't even laughable. I am not sure that a Sunday was necessarily the ideal day for it, and the current recession isn't going to have helped, but even so the lack of floats (there was one small, rather half-hearted, unmanned one) and marching bands (one very small one) seemed a bit surprising. There didn't seem to be many spectators at the Morland Road end of the procession route, but perhaps that was just as well. It has to be said there had been near zero publicity for the event in that part of town, but nonetheless there was still a trickle of people heading towards the park and the numbers built up quite well as the park got nearer.

There had already been a funfair in Ashburton Park for about a week, as there usually is this time of year, but it was pleasing to see a number of stalls laid out in addition, and attempts made to provide entertainment. A very good effort I thought. So well done to the organisers and lets hope they get a bit more support next year if there is to be another carnival.

I was pleased to see that Menta withdrew their plans for redeveloping parts of Cherry Orchard Road just before the planning committee meeting where it was due to be discussed, with the planning department recommending refusal. The plans really were quite ridiculous in so many ways.

The Labour Party was the first to take the credit for this, closely followed by the Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives were more restrained in welcoming the withdrawal and also more accurate, because the recommendation for refusal was based on the failure of the proposals to meet a number of technical requirements and absolutely nothing to do with any lobbying or public opinion at all, though the opposition was noted. Menta's own comments about the lack of support from the Council at the last minute seem to just be nonsense given how many major legal and technical flaws were highlighted.

One of the most ridiculous parts of the proposal was the lack of car parking spaces. Only about 373 spaces were proposed to support somewhere of the order of 1,500 households and also retail and office space. Given the obvious need to be completely self sufficient in car parking provision, spaces for at least one car per household and preferably two would have been more realistic, and that is without the needs of those working in the development and visitors. The astonishing thing is that the proposed number of spaces apparently meets the appropriate guidelines and so was considered acceptable which suggests someone needs to have another look at the guidelines. Worse still TfL actually would have liked it to be a car free development because of the supposedly excellent public transport links. Yes the site is well provisioned with buses, trams and trains but they are already running at over 100% capacity without having to cope with a massive new development. Even if they had the capacity it wouldn't remove the need for private transport. What planet are these people on?

Another absurdity was that the plans included relocating the Royal Mail delivery offices to the site of the present meat processing plant. This sounds fine in principle, but it turns out the plans don't meet the Royal Mail's requirements and they objected to the scheme. They own their current site so it seems the Menta plans were even more fanciful than first thought as they didn't even own the land they want to build on or have the current owners on board.

I discovered this week that Addiscombe is to have its first carnival for about thirty years on this coming Sunday (26th July 2009).  I did remember hearing something about it earlier this year and looking at its web site but I had forgotten all about it. The web site doesn't seem to have been updated with any enthusiasm since then. Apparently there are some posters around and about. It merited all of one small paragraph in the Croydon Guardian. Anyway it seems it forms up in Morland Road and then departs at 11am, ending up in Ashburton Park where there various bits and bobs alongside the annual funfair that has been operating all week.

Perhaps the even bigger news for me is that I was actually able to read my own copy of the Croydon Guardian. For the second week running I've found it on the doormat. Those are the first two copies I've had in 2009, to add to the approximately three copies I received in 2008 (prior to that delivery was very reliable). I assume The Post, or as I call it The 'If you want to know the name of this paper, buy this weeks Croydon Advertiser', still exists but that hasn't been seen for a few months now.

During the working week there has long been a severe parking problem in one stretch of Davidson Road which has meant that residents have often been unable to park near their houses, delivery vans either have to park a long way off or double park obstructing trafffic, and pedestrians have had to emerge from between park cars to cross the road. Over the last couple of weeks this problem seems to have gone away. Residents always put the problem down to the nearby garage doing car repairs as it had minimal car parking and staff and customers parked on the street (and on occasions cars were worked on in the street too) and it seems they have been proved right as the garage has moved. There is now one stretch of Davidson Road that is just that bit calmer and safer. The same company had another site further along the road backing onto the railway. Presumably this has been closed down too and that should remove the issue with cars emerging from a long, narrow alley onto the street, at least for the time being. If the premises are taken over the same problems may come back, of course.

It is somewhat ironic that at the same time this particular stretch of Davidson Road became safer, the council have proposed a 20mph limit for the whole Davidson Road which carries the potential of making it more dangerous. There is certainly an issue with speeding motorists at some times of day, though arguably not a major one and it is not clear how reducing the speed limit to 20mph will make any difference when they don't comply with the existing 30mph one. The major problem Davidson Road has is with congestion in peak hours and the lack of proper crossing places anywhere along the road, which is particularly a problem on the southern third of the road. A 20mph limit would seem likely to increase congestion at busy times and increase the frustration of drivers making them more dangerous. Davidson Road is a very long road for a 20mph limit. Pedestrians crossing the road will have to wait longer for cars to pass which is quite likely going to encourage them to take more chances. They are less likely to be hurt by slower moving cars but it would be better not to be hit at all. I am all for making the roads safer but I am unconvinced that this move will do that.

Notices have appeared on lamp posts in Davidson Road advising of a proposed 20mph limit. As these notices are few and far between and may never be seen by residents, local paper deliveries have pretty much ceased (there were about three editions of the Croydon Guardian delivered in 2008 and The Post hasn't been seen much lately) and the Croydon Council website isn't much use for broadcasting this sort of information (and not much better even if you know the information is there), it isn't clear how residents are being consulted about this proposal. For info the text of the notice is:

PROPOSED 20 M.P.H. SPEED LIMIT IN DAVIDSON ROAD, CROYDON

1. NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that Croydon Council, proposes to make a Traffic Order under the relevant Sections of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, as amended, and all other enabling powers.

2. The general effect of the Order will be to prohibit any motor vehicle exceeding a speed of 20 miles per hour in Davidson Road.

3. A copy of the proposed Order, of the Council’s Statement of Reasons for proposing to make the Order and of a map indicating the lengths of roads to which the proposed Order relates can be inspected until the last day of a period of six weeks beginning with the date on which the Order is made or, as the case may be, the Council decides not to make the Order, during normal office hours on Mondays to Fridays inclusive at the “Access Croydon” facility, Taberner House, Park Lane, Croydon, Surrey.

4. Further information may be obtained by telephoning, Traffic and Road Safety Section, Regeneration and Infrastructure Division on 020 – 8726 7100 extension 62858.

5. Persons desiring to object to the proposed Order should send a statement in writing of their objection and the grounds thereof to the Order Making Section, Parking Services, Community Services, 9th Floor, South West Side, Taberner House, Park Lane, Croydon, CR9 1EN or emailing Parking.Design@croydon.gov.uk quoting the reference CS/PS/JGH/7/B4 by 1 April 2009.

6. The proposed Order is intended to introduce a speed limit of 20 mph in Davidson Road, Croydon. These measures should help reduce traffic speeds, provide more time for pedestrians to cross the road and improve road safety throughout the area, which should particularly benefit children, the elderly and those with mobility problems.

Tom Jeffrey
Executive Director of Community Services

Dated this 11 March 2009.

I thought it was about time I provided updates on the 410 and the refuse and recycling collections.

The service on the 410 seems to be pretty much unchanged. The single door  PDL buses still appear and are still not useful. The dual door ADL suffers from having the wheelchair and pushchair bay on the same side as the doors. The dual door PDL actually seems to have it in the sensible place opposite the central door (or at least one I travelled on did as it is quite possible the interior fitting out might vary) but what it doesn't have is the useful fold down seats of the DWS.

Capacity on the 410 is still inadequate in peak periods, Crystal Palace bound buses at East Croydon are still thin on the ground around 6pm, and drivers still often fail to stop at Cherry Orchard Road even when clearly not full.

The refuse and recycling collection have settled down well. Wheelie bins rarely seem to stray too far from where they started and likewise recycling boxes are usually stacked with their lids in them about as neatly as one can reasonably expect. I haven't tried recycling clothing and shoes again but it still isn't clear how they could easily be handled and I've been taking such items to neighbourhood recycling sites.

The single door PDLs continue to infest the 410. I haven't been on the dual door PDL or the ADL of late but it looks like both have the wheelchair/pushchair bay in the same silly place as the single door buses, although hopefully they might be bigger.

Performance continues to be poor and drivers continue to sail past compulsory stops when they think they are full (even when the waiting passengers can see they are actually half empty).

I was able to monitor the bus service in Davidson Road for a spell yesterday. This spell was from 5:50pm till 6:25pm. During that time you would expect to see at least four buses in each direction. Southbound there were two buses in quick succession after about ten minutes, then a break of ten to fifteen minutes before the next one, then two more in the next ten minutes. So that was a total of five which is about right, although the intervals were a bit messed up.  However that is not the direction of peak flow. In the northbound direction, where crush loading regularly occurs, there was ONE bus, and that was at the end of the period. So that was an interval of at least thirty five minutes between buses during the peak evening period.

One of the minor annoyances with the recycling collections was the tendency for the boxes and lids to just be thrown down anywhere in the vague direction of the front path. However things seem to have greatly improved in this respect and more often than not the boxes do tend to end up with their lids in them roughly where they came from.

It is now the wheelie bins that are becoming more of a problem. Although they do mostly end up where they came from and so only need straightening up, there is an increasing tendency for them to go walkabout. My wheelie bin has the house number on the front, back and top. It is not unusual for it to appear in the next front path along, but today (not for the first time) it had to be rescued from the alley between the next two houses. The bin for the downstairs flat, also numbered on top and at least one side, I found two houses along in the opposite direction. So two bins that started three feet apart in a shared front path ended up twenty yards apart.

Now I know this isn't the end of the world and it isn't happening that often as yet but, and since each bin was delivered with a sticky label for the house number and is individually numbered and chipped so it can in future be associated with a particular address, it doesn't seem to be asking a lot to expect the bin to be put back roughly where it came from.

It used to be the case that the 410 was near exclusively operated by dual door buses with the appearance of a single door bus being so infrequent that it could be put down to temporary use of an engineering spare. However since the change of timetable at the end of April 2008 the route seems to be infested with single door buses. The buses in question are the single door versions of Arriva's PDL type (there are many more dual door PDLs about, and they are often seen on the 410). I have seen at least five different ones. Today I had the misfortune to travel on one to Crystal Palace, and the first three buses I encountered coming the other way were also single doored. I am hoping that the use of these buses is a temporary thing and that perhaps the other buses are being refurbished or equipped with iBus or something, but I don't have any confidence in this at all.

The 410 gets so overcrowded at various times of the day that even the dual door buses can't cope, so a single door bus is completely useless. Even at quieter times the single door PDL is pretty useless as the wheelchair / pushchair bay is small and badly designed. It can just about hold two pushchairs if the second one is small but access can be awkward. In contrast the DWS bus most commonly seen on the route has a larger bay opposite the exit door which can easily hold two pushchairs and can usually handle three if the other passengers and the driver show some consideration. The other thing about the single door PDL is that it is rattles badly and the engine screams as it struggles to climb the hills to Crystal Palace.

I can't make any real comments on the dual door PDLs and the ADLs operating the route, but the DWS seems to do a good job. It is just too small and the buses bunch too much.

The 410 bus has recently had an increase in daytime frequency from a ten minute service to an eight to nine minute one. This is more than welcome as the service does get very well used during the day but it remains to be seen whether it will help much with the overloading between three and four when the schools empty. Unfortunately the eight to nine minute service off-peak is also the peak hours service as it runs from seven a.m. till seven p.m. and it is in the peak periods that the worst failings of the route are shown up.

The route is exceptionally heavily loaded in peak hours. The section from Norwood Junction to East Croydon remains over crowded on school day mornings with buses regularly not stopping to pick up passengers in Davidson Road. In the evening peaks the service is even worse. It remains common for buses not to stop at East Croydon (Cherry Orchard Road) to the fury of waiting passengers and when they do stop they are very heavily loaded. The route is abysmally regulated at the best of times and peak hours are not the best of times, but even if the ridiculous bunching of the buses could be dealt with the route still needs a lot more capacity during those times. A fifty per cent increase probably wouldn't be overstating the issue.

As an aside, what has happened to the idea of compulsory and request stops? At a compulsory stop such as the first stop in Cherry Orchard Road it shouldn't be a requirement for passengers to signal to the driver to stop, and yet the drivers regularly ignore the stop if they are full. How do they know passengers don't want to get off?

One last thing. Being driven on the 410 can be quite an experience. I have heard that modern buses don't really lend themselves to anything but hard acceleration and braking but the 410 takes aggressive driving to the limit.

When news of the changes to the household recycling collections first arrived on my doormat I had several immediate reactions:

• I was absolutely disgusted that, after a long trial of the red bags for plastics and cardboard, the council hadn't had the courtesy, or indeed the sense, to ask the households taking part in the trial for their views as they had said they would at the start.
• I was also disgusted that the council hadn't had the courtesy to signal the forthcoming changes with a decent notice period, instead leaving it so late that recycling had to be retrieved from the red bags to put in the boxes.
• I was pleased at the switch away from the kerbside sorting that had been used with the green boxes as it was noisy, slow, caused traffic disruption, left a trail of rubbish behind and it was also annoying seeing metal and glass often going into the same bin when I had taken the trouble to try and keep the two as separate as possible in the box to make things easier. However I did have reservations in that kerbside sorting was always said to be the 'greener' option in the past (I did query this with the council amongst other things but it wasn't addressed in the reply).
• I was pleased to see the back of the red plastic bags but was concerned that the boxes wouldn't be quite big enough even with less materials now being accepted for recycling.
• I was absolutely baffled by the decision to supply the blue boxes without lids given they were to hold paper and cardboard which wouldn't react too kindly to wind or rain. The council tried to claim that the idea was to use the lids from the green boxes as it didn't matter if plastics, glass and metals got wet but this seemed like a desperate attempt to save face as the publicity materials all showed open blue boxes and any additional blue boxes were also initially being supplied without lids. I can't imagine I was the only one to quickly point out these facts to the council and to remind them that the contents of the green boxes were also vulnerable to wind and that the lids were also required to allow the boxes to be stacked. They also had to consider that boxes with lids look a whole lot nicer and that there were privacy issues to consider as well.

So several months on, how are things progressing?

• The council quickly started supplying lids with any additional blue boxes and now make a point of saying they will supply extra lids.
• As expected, the green and blue boxes aren't quite big enough for a fortnightly collection and every so often two of one colour, or of both, are required.
• The major concern is over the recycling of clothes, shoes and textiles. These are supposed to be placed in the blue box and the council website asks for them to be kept clean and dry (making the lack of lids on the blue boxes ever more laughable). The obvious thing to do is to place them in a separate plastic carrier bag as used to be done with the green box collection, and as the council ask to be done with any materials that would not fit in the boxes. Previously these materials were placed in the cab of the collection vehicle. So where do they end up now? Well they are supposed to end up in a separate compartment in the collection vehicle but after one collection I found them dumped in my wheelie bin. The council did not answer my query as to why. I can fully understand why this might happen as a single person has to drag two very large wheelie bins which he fills from the individual blue and green boxes. He doesn't seem to have anywhere to separate out the clothes etc, especially if they aren't separately bagged. I now have to assume that these materials are not in fact being recycled at all and make my own arrangements.

It still seems to me that the ideal arrangement for householders would be to have either a separate wheelie bin for all recyclables, or to use the system that works well in other areas (e.g. London Borough of Enfield) where there is an easily portable caddy style bin for all recyclables and a weekly collection. The council dismiss the idea of a wheelie bin out of hand claiming that not everyone has room to put out another wheelie bin. This seems a weak argument as the footprint of just one of the recycling boxes is pretty similar to a wheelie bin and unless you stack them you actually need more room for the two or more boxes (and of course boxes without lids can't be stacked very well).

Not really news as it is so belated, but I thought I'd show a not terribly good photo of the Christmas lights on the stretch of the Lower Addiscombe Road west of the Cherry Orchard Road junction. As can be seen the lights are attached to lamp posts with one on the south side of the road near the Cherry Orchard Road junction and five on the north side of the road. I can't make up my mind whether they were really worth the effort, or if indeed they represent a token effort.

The Connect2 project won The People's £50 Million Lottery Giveaway with 42% of the 286,285 votes cast. This will mean the Croydon Parks Links project (or Croydon Park Links, they can't seem to make up their mind which it is) will benefit by £550,000. The money for Connect2 is being released over five years and I don't know if Croydon's money is also being phased over that time or comes as a lump sum. Hopefully Croydon Council will now actually start publicising the project properly and we will get to see exactly what they have in mind.

The site now has a section called 'News, views and updates'. This section will contain occasional items of news related to Addiscombe that I'd like to highlight, even more occasional personal comments on matters related to Addiscombe that I feel don't really fit elsewhere, and mention of any updates to the site that I feel may be of interest. You can also just choose to see the news, my views or the updates if you wish.

This headlines from this section are also available as an RSS 2.0 feed. The items themselves are not being included in the feed as you might as well read them in context on the site.

The Lower Addiscombe Road from Windmill Bridge to Cherry Orchard Road is presently a rather tired and somewhat run down shopping area. There is apparently a 'strategy' to regenerate Addiscombe with this area in particular being mentioned (see Maria Garcia's site). It will be interesting to see what ideas anyone will come up with. There are several changes I'd like to see, but sadly I can't imagine most of them being seriously considered!

A couple of shops have already had their ground floors converted for residential use, two more are clearly ongoing, and planning permission has been granted for several more. The properties that have already been converted have, in my opinion, low quality finishes on the exterior frontages and I don't have high hopes for any future conversions. I suspect that the best one can hope for is that they might actually match. The flats simply look out of place. I really would like to see these properties reinstated as shops but I am sure that will never happen. Sadly the decision to grant planning permission for the conversions may have already done long term damage to the area.

There are, however, shops that I think should be converted to residential use, and those are the two parades just past Cherry Orchard Road. These would appear to have been converted from residential use in the dim and distant past by the addition of extensions on the front. I feel that these properties are disconnected from the main shopping area and they again look out of place. They also detract from the appearance of the Leslie Arms. These shops should have been in the properties being converted to flats mentioned above. I'd like to see the frontages removed and the buildings returned to something like their original appearance. Sadly this is also far fetched I suspect.

The Leslie Arms itself needs to reopen as a pub or perhaps be converted to some other form of bar or restaurant. Whatever happens to it, it needs to be open and it will them form a focal point for the parades of Lower Addiscombe Road and Cherry Orchard Road shops. This is perhaps the most realistic proposition.

I think the junction with Morland Road and Morland Avenue is a mess. The Co-Op and the Morland Road Surgery just shouldn't be there. It would be nice if the building behind could be reinstated to something approximating its original appearance with some green space around it. Again no chance I suspect.

So what would I do with the Co-Op and the surgery? Well I'd like them to see them where Jewson's is now, with a parking area in front of them, providing better parking for the area. The existing on street parking obstructs the view at junctions and can be hazardous.

Croydon Parks Links is one of the seventy-nine schemes in the Connect2 project that is bidding for £50 million from The Big Lottery Fund in "The People's £50 Million Lottery Giveaway". The winner will be decided by public vote. Internet voting begins on the 26th November and telephone voting on the 7th December.

The Parks Links scheme envisages linking various parks in Croydon with safe walking and cycling routes. It is already proposed, when funding becomes available, to extend Addiscombe Railway Park to Blackhorse Lane tram stop but under the Parks Links scheme a path would continue alongside the tram line and so link up with Ashburton Park and South Norwood Country Park. Other proposals in the scheme are perhaps a little more tentative and vary in their viability. For example finding a route from Addiscombe Railway Park to Wandle Park might run into an obstacle in the form of the railway lines north of East Croydon station. On the other hand Park Hill and Lloyd Park could be linked by the existing Fairfield Path for walking with cycle routes using local roads and it would then be a matter of creating safe designated routes into the town centre.

I do like the idea if it can be implemented sensibly and I do think it is worth voting for Connect2.

I pass close by the Church of the Nazarene most weekdays but had I not happened to be walking home on Sunday 11th, rather than hopping on a bus, it is quite likely I'd not have seen this banner advertising an EXP07 on "Addiscombe's Future". I've no idea how long it had been there but I hadn't noticed it before and I suspect it hadn't been there more than a day or two. It faced onto the road so you'd only really have noticed it if you happened to look across when walking on the other side of the road or using the pedestrian crossing. The website mentioned on the banner was only updated on the 14th (having been a month out of date) and even a local councillor only had two days notice. So I was lucky to find out about the event at all.

Well actually it turned out that I was unlucky to find out about the event as it was a complete waste of time with nothing about "Addiscombe's future" at all. No real "information", a few vague "displays" that were not specific to Addiscombe at all (and barely specific to Croydon), and no "Q & A's". It was a complete insult to the residents of Addiscombe.